Walter Besant - The Changeling

She stood before him, seeming to listen. Then she gently moved her head as if touched by the music. Then she raised her arms and began to dance, with such ease and grace and lightness as can only belong to the dancer born.

"Thank you, Molly." He stood up as if the music was over. "We shall confer further upon this point – and other points. When may I come again to visit Miss Molly Pennefather?"

He caught her head in his hands and kissed her gaily on her forehead – after all, he had no more manners than can be expected of a tramp – and vanished.

"If Dick could only play 'Desdemona'!" she murmured, looking after him at the closed door. "Why, he actually looked the part. I suppose he has been in love. If I could only do it so!" She imitated his gestures, and broke out into singing —

"The poor soul sat sighing by a sycamore tree,

Sing all a green willow."

"No," she said; "it won't do. I don't feel a bit like Desdemona. I am only myself, and I am filled with the most unholy longing for money – for riches, for filthy lucre, which we are told to despise."

Her eyes fell upon a newspaper, folded and lying on the floor. It had probably dropped out of Dick's pocket. She took it up mechanically, and opened it, expecting nothing. The sheet was one of the gossipy papers of the day, full of personal paragraphs. She glanced at it, thinking of the paragraphs about herself and her grand success, which would probably never appear, unless she could transform herself.

Presently her eye caught the word "millionaire," and she read —

"Among the nouveaux riches – the millionaires of the West – we must not, as Englishmen, forget to enumerate Mr. John Haveril, who has made his money partly by transactions in silver-mines, and partly by the sudden creation of a town on his own lands. He is said to be worth no more than two or three millions sterling, so that he is not in the very front rank of American rich men. Still, there is a good deal of spending, even in so moderate a fortune. Mr. Haveril is by birth an Englishman and a Yorkshireman. He was born about sixty years ago, and emigrated about the year '55. His wife is also of English origin, having been born at Hackney. Her maiden name was Alice Pennefather."

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